Austin’s biggest media festival, SXSW, is coming up in about five weeks, and the film portion of the fest has unveiled a list of films that will play in the midnight and shorts categories. Running March 8-16, the film portion of SXSW has been growing into one of the country’s premiere film festivals.

The biggest inclusions on the midnight side are Rob Zombie‘s The Lords of Salem (new trailer), Adam Wingard‘s You’re Next (interview), and the very entertaining S-VHS (Sundance review). That horror sequel, incidentally, has evidently been renamed V/H/S/2, just to make the connection to last year’s horror anthology V/H/S much more clear.

There’s also the premiere of Xan Cassavetes‘ Kiss of the Damned, and Haunter, the new film from Vincenzo Natali (Splice). The image above is from Cheap Thrills, and shows how “Craig (Pat Healy) and Vince (Ethan Embry) begin their descent into hell with Colin (David Koechner).”

Info on the full midnight lineup is after the break. Hit the SXSW website for the complete shorts list. Read More »

A few days after the kickoff the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, deal-making is in full swing. The well-reviewed drama The Spectacular Now, by Smashed director James Ponsoldt, is headed to newish distributor A24, while the crowdpleasing comedy Austenland, from Napoleon Dynamite writer Jerusha Hess, is nearing a deal with FilmDistrict. Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan‘s The Look of Love had a mixed reception, but that’s not stopping IFC Films from closing in on a deal; the distributor also released the pair’s last comedy together, The Trip. Meanwhile, Anchor Bay has picked up two narrative features so far, the Dermot Mulroney-starring The Rambler and Leland Orser‘s Morning. (The latter is not playing at Sundance.)

Over in the world of documentaries, music-centric films seem to be doing quite well. Showtime has acquired the broadcast rights to the two-part documentary History of the Eagles, which will air on the channel February 15 & 16. Also headed to television is Pussy Riot — A Punk Prayer, which has been snapped up by HBO Documentary Films. Finally, Twenty Feet From Stardom, which follows some of popular music’s greatest backup singers, will get a theatrical release by RADiUS-TWC. And in non-music news, AMC’s Sundance Selects has grabbed Dirty Wars, about America’s covert wars, and The Summit, about climbers scaling the most dangerous peak in the world.